OP
OP
You need to enable "chat" (RCS) in the Messages app and people you communicate with need to do so as well (when it's rolled out to them).
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US carriers kill Google's RCS messaging initiative
- Thread starter Deleted member 8860
- Start date
You need to enable "chat" (RCS) in the Messages app and people you communicate with need to do so as well (when it's rolled out to them).
Sure can download an app, create an account for the service, log in, add me, and send a message.
Or....
They can text my number since that works. The solution needs to be brain dead easy. Ideally it'd work globally. Not broken up across region.
They should all be able to talk to each other. Easily. Fuck the bull, lol. I don't care what app people use. All I know is I like being able to text my elderly father. He can barely handle text messaging, lol.
the desktop app could be better (video calling would be nice, and it sucks that you have to connect through your phone rather than using an account). but what's app is a cross platform, encrypted, fast, functional chat app. they've almost nailed it.
a couple posters here are squeamish about the facebook connection but 99% of people don't care about that, and as someone who's done dev work for a facebook subsidiary i can vouch for their renewed commitment to data security after cambridge analytca being the real deal.
fall back is a pain if you're sending pictures on a network that charges separately for MMS. It's my one pet peeve with iMessage on my daughter's provider (and I can't block mms at the network level for some reason)
I don't see a big deal having multiple apps. Instead of iMessage in the dock I have a folder with iMessage/WhatsApp/Facebook messenger/line) so whenever there is a notification I still see it in the dock just fine.
Oh, this is why I was suddenly able to see who I was texting yesterday was typing messages. Surprised my shitty little phone was a part of the initial rollout.
In the US though, that's a non issue since it's free. Also, as I mentioned in the post, multiple apps means you've fragmented your experience and need to consciously remember which app to open to contact a specific person. With iMessage, you just open and contact the person without giving a second thought on what you have to open. You're jumping through hoops and justifying why jumping through hoops is okay to people who don't want to jump through hoops. It would be like me trying to insist that people should buy physical movies and rip them rather than buy them digitally because it's superior in quality and then throw up my arms wondering why people don't do it. Some people just don't like the hassle of friction.
I don't even mean to say that whatsapp is a bad messaging platform, I think its quite good in terms of features.
However, I'm in that "1%" that does care about the facebook connection. I'm not willingly giving Facebook any of my data and a scenario where they have a practical monopoly on chat communication in the US sounds like a nightmare. I appreciate why other countries are locked into the platform and its great they're happy with it -- but I don't accept that it is the ideal situation and something anyone in the US should want to move toward.
If only there was a way for your contact list too show you the available apps for each contact... oh wait.
How would that make anything easier? You're still having to juggle multiple apps.
The complaint was that you have to remember who uses what. Not the case. Beyond that I have long since come to understand the US telecommunication market went its own way due to different conditions and there is no use trying to persuade anybody.
1) My contact list doesn't hot link into an app so I'd have to go to the contacts, look up the person, then look up what messaging service they use, back out and select the app.
2) This assumes the contact list is maintained to have all this info which you're adding another barrier of entry. Even if it was maintained, the app would need the proper support to be hotlinked into it so you're relying on apps to properly support this. Anyone deviates, and well you're fragmented again.
3) Most people I know jump right into the app rather than going through their contacts list. You're talking about a significant change in behavior and muscle memory to socialize with someone.
4) This is all still more friction than someone using iMessage and it just working.
You guys keep suggesting people jump through hoops and barriers when people don't want to and have found a solution where they don't have to.
...what?
Have any of you talking about how supposedly complicated WhatsApp (and similar messaging apps) are actually used it?
You just install it and have all your contacts there, both ways (i.e., both in the app as well as your phone's contact list). There are no accounts and nothing complicated to set up. It just works.
Why exactly do you think WhatsApp took off across the globe? It certainly wasn't the first messaging app running on phones, but it was the first bigger one where you didn't have to create an account.
Also, it took off at a time when huge swaths of Europe were dealing with telecoms clinging to archaic networks and pay-per-text plans. That's an important point that keeps getting ignored in this discussion.
Yes, I've used it and moved away from it when I realized a lot of people didn't use it.
Nothing I said in point #2 is invalid but it's not specifically about Whatsapp either. It's about the idea of having multiple messaging apps because people are fragmented across different services. Your contacts lists aren't automatically populated by what services your contacts use so you have to input that information yourself most of the time and make sure you maintain that info to be up to date and completed if you want to use your contacts list as a universal point of entry.
That's absolutely fair and I get it - you need that critical mass of user adoption that gets the ball rolling - but...
On Android they absolutely are.
even MMS? That's pretty good. We have effectively free SMS so it's just MMS that screws us over on price
That's completely irrelevant to the point I'm making, though, which isn't WhatsApp vs. SMS at all, but rather WhatsApp vs. other messaging apps available at the time. WhatsApp won due to simple usage, certainly not due to its feature set (which is still completely above and beyond SMS and I'll never understand how someone could be fine with that. No, MMS doesn't really make things better.)
On Android devices they definitely are. Not that it matters that much, there's about two contacts in my list I couldn't get to via WhatsApp and that's mostly due to privacy concerns, so we're using Signal. Surprisingly, I've not been in a conundrum of "Oh noes, what app to use!" to this day.
I'm on Android and mine are definitely not filled out.
Yep, even MMS for us. The texting plans in the US really made it so that people didn't search elsewhere for solutions and it's one of the key reasons Whatsapp took off in other places but not the US but a lot of people either don't know this or want to ignore that it's a crucial reason why there's a cultural difference on how messaging evolved in different regions.
Who are you with? I'm with Fido and I've had RCS for a long ass time. From my understanding, the RCS issue is mostly just an american problem as the rest of the world already has it enabled (mostly)
In many countries, people usually don't ask. It's just assumed that you already have WhatsApp and already know that you're going to use WhatsApp when you exchange numbers.
On the rare occasion, it's just a simple 'my number is __________, you got WhatsApp?'
Facebook bought WhatsApp *because* it was already huge worldwide.
On the rare occasion, it's just a simple 'my number is __________, you got WhatsApp?'
Facebook bought WhatsApp *because* it was already huge worldwide.
Oh the worst part I forgot to mention was how several people showed up who no longer used it for whatever reason and it wasn't clear that they no longer used it so messages would get sent and it was frustrating when you didn't even know if the person got the message. That was the straw that made me just not bother any further. It's just not viable in the US because of the adoption rate is low and there are alternatives here that people find good enough. Sending a SMS has always been reliable. iMessage has been reliable for those who use it.
Oh I see. Odd I wasn't instructed to change anything. It made it seem like it was automatically.
Thanks for the clarification.
Also because blackberry ruled much of the world for so long. If you were using bbm, you never went back to sms or mms. Those users bought and iPhone or are using WhatsApp.
It appears I already have it. I just don't have data on my phone, so I can't use it. :/